Default bufferline theme is confusing

[dpc]

I'm using solarized_dark (with minor tweaks that should irrelevant) and the bufferline with default (theme) settings looks like this:

This is confusing. The "active" tab looks the same as background, making it not very distinguishable (especially when the active tab is the right-most one).

I've tweaked it locally with:

"ui.bufferline" = { fg = "base03", bg = "base0" }
"ui.bufferline.active" = { fg = "base0", bg = "base03" }
"ui.bufferline.inactive" = { fg = "base03", bg = "base0" }

and now it looks:

Now the active tab is the only distinct element, and looks a bit like an extension of the buffer view itself, which I consider very natural, and looks very tab-like when switching buffers:

I did play a bit with making the active background slightly different than the buffer itself, but I actually didn't like it. And it would make a generic defaults for all themes harder.

Anyway - it seems that by tweaking the fallbacks in:

helix/helix-term/src/ui/editor.rs

Line 512 in d5fe08d

pub fn render_bufferline(editor: &Editor, viewport: Rect, surface: &mut Surface) {

, it would be possible to achieve the same effect for all themes by default:

• For inactive tabs and background use styling of the statusbar, so they blend and look like the statusline.
• For active tab use styling of the buffer view, so it looks like an extension/tab of the buffer.

[jhscheer]

I've tweaked it locally with:

"ui.bufferline" = { fg = "base03", bg = "base0" }
"ui.bufferline.active" = { fg = "base0", bg = "base03" }
"ui.bufferline.inactive" = { fg = "base03", bg = "base0" }

There's no ui.bufferline.inactive:

helix/helix-term/src/ui/editor.rs

Lines 512 to 530 in 6f135e5

	pub fn render_bufferline(editor: &Editor, viewport: Rect, surface: &mut Surface) {
	let scratch = PathBuf::from(SCRATCH_BUFFER_NAME); // default filename to use for scratch buffer
	surface.clear_with(
	viewport,
	editor
	.theme
	.try_get("ui.bufferline.background")
	.unwrap_or_else(|| editor.theme.get("ui.statusline")),
	);
	let bufferline_active = editor
	.theme
	.try_get("ui.bufferline.active")
	.unwrap_or_else(|| editor.theme.get("ui.statusline.active"));
	let bufferline_inactive = editor
	.theme
	.try_get("ui.bufferline")
	.unwrap_or_else(|| editor.theme.get("ui.statusline.inactive"));

[dpc]

@jhscheer Yeap. That line in my config is unnecessary. I'm not very familiar with the details there. I don't even know why bg works, where .background is used in that code. 🤷 . But it works for me so doesn't matter.

The main for the issue is - having good defaults out of the box.